Single mums - I salute you!

In the last year I have been pretty thankful, on one or two occasions, that I can share the 'burden' of Boychild with Husb but last night I really could not have been more thankful! 

Just before 1am, I was woken by the sobbing of Boychild.  It's pretty unusual for him to wake up at that time and even more unusual for him to sound so inconsolable.  I went in and found him kneeling in his cot covered in, and surrounded by, vomit (tmi - apologies).  He'd clearly thrown-up in his sleep and woken up in it as it was everywhere - in his hair, in his ears and eyes, on his sleeping bag and sleepsuit, the cot bumper and obviously all over the sheet.  

All of a sudden I felt this wash of panic and in a very 'ER' kind of way I yelled to Husb, 'gonna need some help in here!'.  

Thankfully, within an hour of waking, Boychild was sleeping peacefully once more after being stripped, bathed, redressed, read-to and, most importantly, cuddled quite a lot.  In fact, we found that he had left a teddy or two behind in our bed and, between you and me, I quite enjoyed snuggling up to them.

Whilst I really could have done without being on red alert for a whole hour less than 3 hours after falling asleep, it was all over fairly quickly and I was asleep not long after my little man.  But this morning it got me thinking.  The only reason everything went so smoothly and swiftly was because the load was shared between two people.   I stripped Boychild whilst Hubby ran the bath and then Hubby bathed him whilst I stripped the bed, cleaned it, remade it and found some clean nightwear.  I took the still sobbing munchkin and cuddled him dry as Husb emptied the bath and tidied the bathroom and then I loaded the washing machine and found a clean cuddly toy to take to bed while Husb dressed him.  All within about half an hour.

A full recovery seemed to have taken place by now and the previously sobbing child was now playing jumping games on the marital bed and trying to comb my hair (which basically involved bashing me on the head with the comb).  So we found some books, tucked him in the middle of us and let him 'read' for ten minutes, then bundled him up and took him back to his own bed and popped him down.  Within another few minutes he was snoring and stayed like that til morning.

What if Husb had been out/away on business/a total git who didn't get involved with his own child?  Surely this is the kind of situation a single mum has to deal with on a daily basis?  Don't misunderstand me, I have had to sort out Boychild alone when he's been ill in the past, but that was in the middle of the day, I was wide awake and we hadn't just moved, so I knew exactly where to find everything really quickly! 

Basically what I'm trying to say is 'mucho respect' to all the single mums out there - whatever the reason for your situation, you have a damn hard job and I salute you.